What's the carbon footprint of a Coca-Cola?

At the Coca-Cola system, we've worked with the Carbon Trust to measure the carbon footprint of some of our most popular drinks, including Coca‑Cola, Diet Coke, Coca‑Cola Zero and Oasis. This meant looking at every aspect of a drink's lifecycle, from transporting raw ingredients to disposing of empty bottles and cans.

A carbon footprint helps us check the impact we are having on the environment. It measures the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by different activities such as sourcing and producing packaging materials; growing, processing and transporting ingredients; manufacturing, distributing and chilling the product; and recycling the empty package. Every business and individual has their own footprint, so knowing the size and components of your footprint makes it easier to decide how you're going to reduce it.

This is the first time that the footprint of any brand of sparkling drink has been certified by the Carbon Trust. We were driven by our desire to be as environmentally friendly as possible, in keeping with our responsibilities as the world's favourite soft drinks company.

Carbon footprint of a can of Coca-Cola at a glance

Next steps for our footprint
The report helped us take action to make our business practices more environmentally friendly. For example, we discovered that between 30 and 70 per cent of a single drink's carbon footprint is taken up by its packaging. Since finding this out, we have worked even harder to make our bottles and cans more lightweight, use more recycled material and make it easier for our customers to recycle bottles and cans once they're done with them.

Tom Delay, the chief executive of the Carbon Trust, praised our efforts to look honestly at our energy use and try to reduce it. He said: "Coca‑Cola was one of the first companies to sign up for carbon footprinting with the Carbon Trust. As part of its ongoing commitment to reducing its carbon impact, it has made an important contribution to our work to create the product carbon footprinting standard."